It appears the third time truly is a charm.
After almost giving up applying for grant funding to upgrade the Sundre Airport following two failed attempts over the past couple of years, Myron Bignold was pleasantly surprised when his third bid bore fruit.
“I was starting to lose hope,” said Bignold, a Sundre Flying Club board director and pilot with some 1,200 hours of flight time who owns a Cessna 180.
“It’s a really good feeling,” he said about finally securing the funding.
Bignold said a $35,000 provincial grant from the Community Infrastructure Program — he had applied for $70,000 — enabled the installation of new fuel meters and a new 24-7 self-serve touchscreen payment terminal to facilitate credit card transactions.
A new 24-7 touchscreen card lock payment system was recently installed at the Sundre Airport to facilitate transactions. A $35,000 provincial grant made possible the upgrade, which also required new fuel meters.
Additionally, the club invested some $30,000 from its own budget as well for a new jet fuel delivery system, he said.
“We’re adding a new jet fuel service,” he said last week, adding efforts to finish that installation were ongoing but expected to be finished before long.
“It’s just about done,” he said, adding among the remaining details are completing the final electric work as well as getting the fuel tank’s registration done.
Previously the airport was only able to provide what is known as avgas — short for aviation gasoline. Now it will soon be able to also fuel up turboprop planes such as refurbished DC-3s and Twin Otters as well as helicopters like the Bell 206, he said.
“Most small planes and small helicopters burn avgas,” he said.
“The bigger ones burn jet fuel.”
The airport has always been able to accommodate such aircraft in terms of takeoffs and landings, he said.
“We just didn’t have the fuel for them, but now we will.”
The upgrades represent a substantial improvement for the airport. In the past, pilots who refuelled typically needed to contact a club volunteer to manually process a credit card payment by phone, he said, adding the streamlined approach will save time for everyone involved.
Although owned by Mountain View County, the Sundre Airport is operated and maintained by the flying club and provides services such as emergency responses for the area, he said.
“We have a GPS approach coming into here,” he said, adding that if for whatever reason a STARS air ambulance was unable to touch down at the Sundre Hospital and Care Centre, the airport could serve as an alternate landing site.
And in the event of, for example, devastating flooding that left Sundre isolated, the airport would offer a crucial lifeline, he said.
“If the bridges got knocked out, you could still fly out of here,” he said, adding, “We hope that never happens.”
While it serves mainly as a recreational airport, Bignold said that potentially could change in the future.
“We don’t have any commercial flights out of here right now,” he said, adding some companies such as Sundre Forest Products do however, occasionally have flights coming in.
He said hopefully in the coming years additional improvements could pave the way to enable commercial activity. Making the jet fuel and 24-7 self-serve payment system available is an important step forward, he said.
“If you can’t buy fuel, there’s not much use in coming here.”
The club largely generates revenue through fuel sales, with the county waiving development permit fees as well as providing about $85,000 a year to help the non-profit group operate and maintain the airport, he said.
